i wander the concrete
by captainswan5evs
Summary: Based on recent spoilers about the OUAT season 4 finale. Ahh! They're so intense! Don't read unless you want to know about them! This is just something I had in my head about the aftermath of Emma's sacrifice. I don't really know what it turned into, I kinda just went with the idea. Also, if you want to listen, Hozier's Angel of Small Death helped me while I wrote.


He felt her absence like a violent punch to the gut. The wind that swallowed up her form seemed to have taken with it everything inside of him (everything that mattered), and he struggled to breathe.

"Emma."

The name came out in a raspy whisper.

It was all he could manage after the screams for her to stop, to find another way, _any other way_, left his throat hoarse. He stumbled towards where the dagger had fallen in her place until he was kneeling in front it, staring.

Her form had vanished in a show of chaos, her hair billowing around her like a golden halo. Her face was set in determination, with a desperate sadness in her eyes that matched his own. Her inner magic raged with the darkness of the dagger, swirling and sparking and howling through the streets of the quiet town. She had been glorious sight to behold, the most beautiful and terrifying he had ever seen her. A righteous angel bringing them all back from the brink of perdition. A savior.

And he still couldn't bloody breathe.

Because she was here and now she wasn't, and the world was closing up around him. In a haze, he grabbed up the dagger and clutched it to himself in the hopes of feeling something, anything, aside from the darkness threatening to swallow him up again...

Distantly, he could make out the sound of Mary Margaret's sobs. It was the piercing cry of a mother intimate with loss, too familiar with the pain of being torn away. David stood there, clinging to his wife as tightly as she was to him. The silent tears streaming down his face making him look much like the defeated man that Killian felt. For the first time since he had known them, the Charmings had never looked so hopeless.

A short distance away, Regina stood looking dumbfounded. Robin was at her side, wearing his own stricken expression. Both were still except for the small circles Robin was rubbing into Regina's back for comfort.

And that left Killian. On his own once again, and without even a body to cradle close. Every happiness he thought he had ever felt was suddenly and completely ripped away. At least when Liam and Milah had gone from him he was left with some proof they had ever existed, he thought numbly. He continued to stare at the road where Emma's boots had been firmly planted a few minutes earlier, refusing to blink lest the tears fall and her absence becomes real and whole and...

"Killian," said a quiet voice that seemed to appear out of the shadows, "Killian," it said again when the pirate made no move to answer, "m-my mom. Where is my mom? That's what everyone is so upset about, right? What happened to her?" Henry was starting to become more frantic with each question.

"Lad." Killian croaked out to stop him. He could barely reply, he didn't know where to start.

Killian still gripped the dagger in his hand, the warped edges leaving long, ragged cuts across his hand and the area on his chest (over his heart) where he had started to dig the sharp edges of the blade into his skin. He flexed his hand, and the blood dripped faster down his arm and torso and towards the pavement in warm and steady drops. The metallic smell of it mingling with the electric charge of the air that was left in Emma's wake.

Henry sunk to his knees next to Killian, and despite his recent growth spurts, in this moment he looked small, and very much like the lost boy he had almost once become all that time ago in Neverland. He reached for the dagger in Killian's clutch, his fingers slipping uselessly against the damp handle. He tried again, found purchase, and tugged hard. With a clatter, the cursed instrument fell to the ground between them.

They both looked at it for a moment, took in the new name written in elegant script across the hilt, and Henry's eyes widened in sheer terror. When he raised his gaze to meet Killian's, his eyes were full of tears at the realization of what his mother had done.

"Ki-," the boy was about to repeat once again, but his voice broke, choked off by a sob. Overcome by his grief, Killian lunged out and grabbed Henry to him, holding him fiercely against his right side, neither of them paying mind to the blood smearing across the back of the boy's coat from his cut hand.

"What are we going to do?" Henry whispered after a while.

"I'm going to find her," Killian replied in a hushed fervor, a man possessed "I promised her, as I promise you now, Henry. You have lost your father, but I won't allow you to lose your mother. _We_ will find her."

Henry was clinging to him in return, and buried his head into the pirate's shoulder at his words, leaving Killian a sopping mess of blood and tears. Sobs racked Killian's own body and he finally allowed himself to cry in the boy's embrace. The cut above his heart stung and pulsed, and somewhere deep in his chest he felt the flutter of her heartbeat. Her parting words echoed in his head, his redemption and his undoing. I love you.

"No matter the costs."


End file.
